He walks slowly toward home plate. The boos get louder and the taunts more cruel.

"I hear it everywhere I go on the road," he says softly, speaking almost in a whisper. "They scream stuff, calling me names, trying to make me mad or upset me. Everyone wants to bring up what happened last year.

"They pay their money. They can do what they want. But the stuff they yell just makes me better."

It has been nine months since Cabrera, 27, was jailed after a heavy night of partying during the final weekend of a crucial pennant race. Now, he says he is a new man. He spent the offseason undergoing alcohol and counseling sessions in Miami and says the treatments changed his demeanor.

Cabrera won't give fans the satisfaction that their taunts are a motivating force fueling his MVP-caliber season and what he hopes will be a spot on the American League All-Star team when rosters are announced Sunday.

"You want to hurt me, I'm going to hurt you and your team. … I am going to do everything I can to beat your team, then we'll see who's going to be feeling bad," he says.

Cabrera is hitting .337 and is tied for the major league lead with 20 homers and 68 RBI going into the holiday weekend series with the Seattle Mariners. He is hitting 59 points higher on the road (.364) than at home, with 12 of his homers and 42 RBI coming away from Detroit. He's dominating everything but the All-Star fan balloting, ranking third behind Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins and Mark Teixeira of the New York Yankees for the July 13 game.

Cabrera would love to be the starting first baseman for the first time in his career, but by making the team, it will reflect how far he has come since the last time he was in baseball's spotlight — for all of the wrong reasons.

"I thought maybe I was too good for baseball," Cabrera says. "I thought I was already on top of the world."

His career, his personal life and even his future dramatically changed after that tortured October evening.

"I learned so much from my mistakes," Cabrera says. "It wasn't like I was a bad guy before, but I'm a better person now.

"I've been a good player, too. But now I want to be great. I'm just a different person."

These words seem to come from the heart, reflected by the anguish in his face when he talks about his past and his smile when he discusses his future.

The Tigers players, coaching staff and management see the change. The rest of the AL feels it.

"He's such a better person now, a much better act," says third baseman Brandon Inge, a teammate since 2008. "It takes a man to admit you're wrong, that you're having problems, and willing to do what it takes to clean yourself up. That's what he did.

"He didn't care or take things seriously before. I'm not saying he didn't care at all, but if you didn't feel good personally, you're probably not going to feel good on the field.

"I remember times when guys (on the opposing team) would tell me, 'If he just applied himself, he'd be the best in the game.' Now, he's applying himself 100% of the time, and he's doing stuff on the field I've never seen."

Cabrera is one of five players who has driven in at least 100 runs in each of the last six seasons. He leads the AL with 91 homers and 298 RBI since 2008.

"He was always a good hitter, but you always had a feeling he could be a better hitter," Tigers left fielder Johnny Damon says. "This season, he has become the best hitter I've seen. Five years down the road, he wants people to remember him as the best hitter they've seen.

"I know I've never seen anything like it."

'I knew I messed up my life'

On Oct. 2, 2009, Cabrera says he was led to the painful recognition that he was cheating himself, his teammates and the fans. He was content in simply being a good player that made him richer than his wildest dreams.

Instead, his world crashed, leaving him in a jail cell to wonder if he had lost his family, his teammates and maybe his future.

"It was bad," Cabrera says. "I knew I messed up my life. I knew things had to be different. I asked for help."

After an 8-0 loss to the Chicago White Sox, Cabrera partied with several Sox players at their Birmingham, Mich., hotel. According to the Birmingham police report, he came home about 5 a.m., was talking loudly on his cellphone and awoke his wife, Rosangel, and 4-year-old daughter, Rosangel. Cabrera and his wife got into a heated argument. According to the report, Rosangel, saying her husband of five years was drunk and hit her, called 911. It was the only time their argument became physical, she told police.

Cabrera was brought into the police station. His blood-alcohol level was 0.26 — more than three times the legal driving limit in Michigan. He was released to Tigers President David Dombrowski, who had been made aware of another drunken incident at the same hotel bar five weeks earlier, according to police records. No charges were filed in either case.

The Tigers had heard stories about Cabrera's nightlife, but not enough to confront him until that night, Dombrowski says.

"If it had reached that point, I would have stepped in before that," says Dombrowski, who has known Cabrera since the slugger was 16. " I've been doing this for a while, and when you have proper information, I've never hesitated stepping in. But you can't just react on impulses. You have to have facts."

Cabrera, with scratches on his face, played that evening. He went hitless in four at-bats, stranding six runners, and the Tigers lost again, blowing a three-game lead in three days. He went 0-for-11 in the series.

Three days later, after Detroit lost a tiebreaker game to the Minnesota Twins, Cabrera was blamed for the Tigers' collapse, as they became the first team to blow a three-game lead with four games remaining.

"It wasn't fair, because without him, we wouldn't have gotten there," says Yankees outfielder Curtis Granderson, then with Detroit. "But people wanted to blame someone."

The next day, Cabrera asked the Tigers for help. He spent three months in an outpatient clinic dealing with alcohol abuse, he says, and confessed in January during Tigers FanFest that he was a broken man.

"He took care of a major problem," Dombrowski says. "You look at him now, he has a different approach … and he feels good. We're all very proud of what he's done. He tackled the problem willingly, wholeheartedly, and is aware that he needs to stay on top of it."

Cabrera hasn't had a drink since that night, he says. He feels stronger and healthier, and his statistics reveal he has never been better. His marriage, he says, has never been stronger. His wife gave birth to their second daughter, Isabella, in May, and Cabrera missed two games to be at his wife's side.

"What I did was bad," he says. "I know it was wrong. But a lot of good came out of it. This is as happy as I've ever been.

"I'm not talking about just on the field. I'm talking about life."

Too much, too easy, too soon?

Cabrera, whose mother was a catcher on Venezuela's national team and whose father played baseball with former Cincinnati Reds great Davey Concepcion, had scouts drooling by middle school. He signed at 16, reached the major leagues by 20, made the All-Star team at 21 and signed an eight-year, $152.3 million contract at 24.

"I played with him when he was 19, and he was a man-child," says Twins pitcher Carl Pavano, 34, who won a World Series with Cabrera in 2003 with the Florida Marlins. "He just had such great ability. He liked to enjoy himself after games, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that we weren't all doing.

"But you can see the difference in him. You can tell he's at peace."

Maybe it was the money, signing the richest contract in Tigers history, or the fame, having become a folk hero back home in Venezuela. Maybe it was just too easy, earning an All-Star berth in each of his first four full seasons.

Cabrera admits he never took the game seriously enough to be a perennial All-Star. There were at-bats he took off, say teammates such as Magglio Ordonez and Ryan Raburn. He's hitting .339 with 11 homers and 41 RBI in day games this year. He didn't have more than nine homers or 34 RBI during day games in any year since 2007.

It wasn't so much being hung over or overly fatigued in day games, Cabrera says, but not being mentally prepared to play. He could have lousy numbers in day games, but compensate at night.

"I've always been a good player, but I was satisfied with that," Cabrera says. "But I don't think like that anymore. I have something to prove. I want people to think of me as one of the game's greatest players."

Says teammate Ramon Santiago: "He's on a mission. He wants to redeem himself."

It's only July, but mission accomplished. He's among the league leaders in virtually every statistical category, with a .412 on-base percentage and major league-best .628 slugging percentage. He's on pace to hit a career-high 42 homers and drive in 143 runs, despite playing home games at Comerica Park — a pitchers' paradise.

"I don't think I've ever seen in my 47 years anybody that has hit the ball to the opposite field with authority like this guy," says Tigers manager Jim Leyland, who managed home-run king Barry Bonds with the Pittsburgh Pirates. "It's the best opposite-field power I've seen. He's a great player, just a force."

Cabrera is putting up numbers that could earn him his first MVP award and first All-Star nod since 2007. No offense, Cabrera's teammates say, but it will be a sin if he's not starting. "If he doesn't make the All-Star Game, I think the players will revolt," starter Max Scherzer says. "He's the MVP of the league. If not for him, we're not in this race."

Cabrera won't complain, no matter the voting outcome. Tigers fans have been overwhelming in showing their affection. The front office and coaching staff's encouragement has never waned. And the club never considered trading Cabrera, Dombrowski says.

"The fans have been so beautiful, my teammates have had my back, and I thank God for that," Cabrera says. "Now, I want to do something for them. … I want to win a championship.

"I don't want to just be the best player. I want to be a great person, too.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more.